"Do you like it?" "Yes." "Is it good?" "Uhhhhh-": An Attempt to Define Lena-flavored Media

In grad school, one of my assignments was to write a fandom self-ethnography, taking after the readings of Matt Hills in Fan Culture. It was an essay assignment, but in order to properly organize my thoughts (and also because I found the work fun) I made a chart:

This is not a comprehensive list, nor is it entirely factual. Aside from the failure of being in chronological order (you can see me try to squeeze names into the appropriate areas) there's also a lot of nuance to what one might consider 'fandom.' I've always been an engaged television viewer and I would consider my inability to speak about anything other than Power Rangers for an entire year as qualification for its inclusion even though I never wrote anything or went to a con. Yet I have somehow seen every episode of Boy Meets World, and enjoy talking about the world and characters, and would agree that it was a formative show for me, but I don't know that it feels like a 'fandom' show to me. (Maybe because it's a sitcom and comedy nerds are a whole different animal that don't much overlap with transformative fandom? Except the current renaissance of MASH.) I was trying very hard to make everything line up perfectly when it didn't, like listing Noel Fielding under People. His whole era of comedy had a huge effect on me (as well as on a relationship I have with a close friend) but he's nowhere near on par with the obsession I had with JGL or Tom Welling.

It's more accurate to say that here is where I'm trying to map the phases of my media diet - I went from being a Disney Channel kid to watching a lot of off-kilter BBC shows, and both types of shows had an effects on how I enjoyed and thought about television. The community sites were equally as important to my sense of fandom although my inclusion of podcasts are admittedly awkward. I don't think capturing an entire life in media is even really possible, but that did not stop me from attempting again a few years ago.

For a recent birthday party I quickly defined the term 'blorbo' and then asked everyone to show up in costume. Also I turned my house into a blorbo museum with printed out photos and blurb(o)s about why that character was so special to me. And also made a huge poster with a timeline that has stayed up for three years. Because I'm sooooo normal, you guys.

This timeline was aided by my original but you can tell it's much more streamlined. It's dictated solely by what feels like a fandom blorbo rather than what might be considered influential. I still have some nitpicks and hang-ups, I'm not sure fictionalized Fred & Ginger count and my Skywalker phase was not to heights of Captain America or Illya, but it was definitively a phase. (Why did I not write Steve Rogers for Cap? Mysteries.) And there's no Monkees. And to say that Jamie was the entire of my Doctor Who phase feels insanely inaccurate considering I've watched the whole series twice and continue to talk about other characters with a lot of passion but it remains true that Jamie is the character I am the most in love with. Etc etc, I have a lot of complaints about the way my mind works.

One of the reasons I find this fun is because it would be nice to see any sort of pattern in my proclivities. My blorbos can pretty neatly be divided into "eager puppy" with varying degrees of angst attached and "deeply unnormal smart guy." The media also falls heavily into fantasy/sf/superhero genre (except S&H?) which sort of just seems like what fandom is to me. The buddy spy-fi to buddy cop pipeline is real, too. I wouldn't include The Persuaders on this list though, even though that show certainly circles around a lot of the same qualities.

The Persuaders is something I would say is "Lena-flavored." Despite not being a significant show, and not something I'm going to dive deeply on, it appeals to me purely through its familiarity and similarity to other shows I adore. A show I probably wouldn't recommend to others if they weren't already big fans of Roger Moore, Tony Curtis, or The Avengers.

My logic brain wants to break it down into specific traits:

• any success is entirely due to the relationship and chemistry between the two leads
• hyper-stylized in format and fashion, lots to gawk at
• is at least trying to be a 'fun', light time
• exceedingly 'stupid'

For similar reasons, during the pandemic, I watched the entirety of The Sentinel, another B-tier fandom show that had little to recommend it outside of 90s-style action (explosions) and Blair's short king stature and luscious locks.

The Sentinel feels like an important 90s fandom link but so is Due South and I haven't watched every single episode of that (I will tho). By lots of TV people's standards, Sentinel would be a "bad" show, and I'm not going to argue those points, but that isn't what I'm caring about while watching this type of show. I'm not trying to justify why I like it, because enjoying art doesn't need justification, but trying to suss out what makes it likeable to me, specifically. What in my life has prepped me to feel differently about this show.

Lena-bait happens in all kinds of ways and shapes outside of the few bullet points I covered. I would consider Sinners and Interview with the Vampire to be excellent Lena-bait, as well as any witty slapstick comedy with Cary Grant at its center. But Lena-flavored TV has very small broader appeal and so somehow feels much more made specifically for me to fill up my time while I'm waiting for the next lightning bolt to hit.

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